1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications systems, and, in particular, to a system for managing interactive telephone calls charged to a debit account.
2. Statement of Related Art
For years, companies such as AT&T, the Bell Operating Companies, Sprint, and MCI have offered to the public commercial telephone credit cards, usually referred to as calling cards. Each customer is given a unique account number that can be used to charge telephone calls to the customer's credit account. Each month, the card-issuing company presents the customer with a bill for the accumulated charges. The customer must then pay the bill, for example, by check or by charging to a commercial credit card. If the customer does not pay on time, the company must take additional actions to attempt to collect from the customer. These billing and collection efforts cost time and money to both the company and the customer.
In commercial credit card and calling card systems, anyone who has access to a customer's account number is able to charge calls to that credit account. When an account number is stolen, users can run up large charges to the credit account. Stolen credit account numbers are often sold to multiple users who make simultaneous calls using the same account number. While some of these costs may be passed on to the customer, most are absorbed as losses by the credit card companies themselves.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,222 (Kalfon) describes a telecommunications system that allows users to charge the costs of telephone calls using a "prepaid credit" or debit card. When a call is placed, the cost of the call is deducted from the balance on the card. Therefore, the total charges that can be placed on a given card are limited to the balance remaining on the card. However, the account balance in the Kalfon system is physically stored on the "smart" debit card itself and users can only place calls from specially designed telephones designed to accept the special debit cards.
Conventional telecommunications systems, both hardware and software, cannot practically provide a debit account system that combines the advantages of commercial telephone credit account systems with the advantages of a debit card system. For example, AT&T UNIX.TM.-based telecommunications systems are generally too slow and/or too expensive to support the throughput required for a practical debit account system. Moreover, conventional systems accumulate charges on a message-unit basis. Such systems do not account for applicable taxes on a real-time basis and therefore do not comply with state and federal regulations. In addition, conventional systems do not provide adequate safeguards against fraud and abuse.